CHICAGO – Kim Young, a mother of three and grandmother of two who was strip searched and forced to submit to vaginal probing by Cook County Jail guards after being picked up on a traffic warrant, will speak out today at a 3:30 PM press conference in the lobby of the Dirksen Federal Building, 219 S. Dearborn, Chicago.

Young is the lead plaintiff in a class action lawsuit filed by the civil rights law firm Loevy & Loevy against the largest single jail complex in the country, which takes in about 100,000 people a year.

Regardless of the charges they face, all detainees are strip searched and forced to expose their body cavities to the jail guards to view. Female detainees are routinely forced to submit to a vaginal probing procedure. The women are ordered to place their feet in stirrups while a probe was inserted into the vagina.

"The jail has no valid reason for subjecting women to this humiliating procedure. The administrators abandoned performing the equivalent procedure on male detainees several years ago after being sued by a male detainee," said Young's attorney, Michael Kanovitz. "The fact that Cook County still treats the women this way violates their fundamental constitutional rights."

Part of the lawsuit addresses the procedures the male detainees are forced to undergo, again, regardless of charges. Men are ordered to strip naked and line up, shoulder-to-shoulder in groups of 100 or more. In part of the procedure, the men are ordered as a group to bend over and spread their buttocks with their hands while guards walk down the row and visually inspect each man's anal cavity. These group strip searches routinely last 30 minutes or more.

"There is no legitimate purpose in subjecting all detainees to these humiliating and dehumanizing procedures," said Kanovitz. "When people held on minor offenses, and who haven't even been convicted at that, are punished in this manner simply because they cannot make bail, it says something very disturbing about the lack of respect these jail administrators have for our Constitution."

In addition to Ms. Young, attorneys Michael Kanovitz and Jon Loevy will address the press conference. Copies of the complaint will be available at the press conference. For more information, please call 312.243.5900.

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